Montgomery, Baltimore vying for bio

Regions work to bolster their bioscience communities

"We're not really that far from Baltimore. We like to take the view that there is enough for all of us," says Elaine Amir, executive director of Johns Hopkins' Montgomery County campus in Rockville. With her are Steven E. Linberg (left), vice president and treasurer of Chiesi Pharmaceuticals, and Roger Sungwoo Kang, executive vice president and COO of TissueGene, two companies at the campus.

Some call it a rivalry, friendly or not. Some say it is a collaborative relationship.

The historical competition between Montgomery County and Baltimore for state budget funds, political clout and bank deposits is extending into another arena: bioscience companies.

With federal assets such as the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration headquarters in its backyard, Montgomery has long been dominant in the life sciences sector. But there are some chinks in Montgomery's armor. The county's share of bioscience companies across Maryland declined from 58 percent in 2002 to 55 percent in 2006, according to the latest survey by industry group MdBio. New Baltimore bioparks have attracted some businesses from Montgomery and Northern Virginia lately.

"There is some competition between us," said Scott Levitan, senior vice president and development director for the Science + Technology Park at Johns Hopkins, developed by the Forest City-New East Baltimore Partnership. The first of five planned buildings in that biopark near medical giant Johns Hopkins opened about a year ago, and the 280,000-square-foot, $100 million facility is 50 percent occupied, with an additional 20 percent committed to leases, he said.

"Montgomery County is more established as a location for standalone bioscience companies in Maryland," Levitan acknowledged. "We've won some and lost some."

Others say the competition aspect is overplayed.

"We're not really that far from Baltimore," said Elaine Amir, executive director of Johns Hopkins University's Montgomery County campus in Rockville. "We like to take the view that there is enough for all of us."

J. Thomas Sadowski, president and CEO of the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, a public-private partnership that markets the region, also downplayed the competitiveness between Baltimore and Montgomery.

"The institutional relationship can drive a company's decision on where to open," he said.

The criteria for considering whether to open in Baltimore or Montgomery County are different, developers say.

"Some tenants evaluated us against Montgomery County based on labor force or other considerations," Levitan said. "Or others say that it's best to be where the chief scientists are."

Richard A. Zakour, executive director of MdBio, a division of the Tech Council of Maryland, said he believes Baltimore's bio community is "synergistic" with Montgomery's. Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) spoke about how the bio communities in both areas need to be nurtured in a recent news conference at Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation in Rockville.

Still, while Baltimore's bio community may be growing, Montgomery is still the dominant player in the state, said Steven A. Silverman, Montgomery County's economic development director.

"There are many more biotech companies in Montgomery County, and bigger ones, than other areas of the state," he said.

MdBio's 2006 survey showed 198 companies in Montgomery to 54 in Baltimore city and 43 in Frederick County.

Other officials, including Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) and Rep. Christopher Van Hollen Jr. (D-Dist. 8) of Kensington, recently highlighted the importance of Montgomery not standing pat in the bio arena. "The future for us is in the life sciences," Leggett said.

Baltimore bioparks

adding tenants

Baltimore-area officials say the number of bio companies there has grown considerably in the past couple of years, with the development of bioparks near Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland campuses. The Greater Baltimore Committee has a list of 85 biotechs in the Baltimore area, and it does not include all bio-related jobs such as those with health care institutions, said spokesman Gene Bracken. But none of the companies approaches the size of MedImmune and Human Genome Sciences in Montgomery and Frederick counties.

Recent tenants at the Hopkins biopark include Champions Biotechnology, which moved from Arlington, Va., and Cangen Biotechnologies, which moved from Bethesda.

A key reason for Champions' move was to be closer to its board chairman and co-founder, David Sidransky, a Hopkins oncology professor, said CEO Douglas Burkett. Co-founder Manuel Hidalgo is also an oncology professor at Hopkins.

Executives reviewed other bioparks in the Baltimore area as well as in Montgomery County, Burkett said. "We were also looking at access to some of the facilities that the biopark offers," he said.

Leasing costs were lower in the Baltimore area, and there was some competition between the bioparks that helped the company negotiate a good price, Burkett said.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore BioPark on the west side of campus opened its first 120,000-square-foot building in 2005. That was fully leased by the following year, and a second 240,000-square-foot structure was unveiled in 2007. A third building and a new Maryland Forensic Center are expected to open in 2010, with seven more buildings planned.

The development of the bioparks in Baltimore, along with the life science expansions in Montgomery and other areas, may be enough to push Maryland past Massachusetts and California as the nation's top biotech state in the near future, according to Baltimore economic consulting firm Sage Policy Group.